So, as usual, I was reading the Goldstream Gazette and I came across some news about a teaching community garden at the Westshore Centre for Learning, just down the street from RRU. The teaching garden is educating children about small, food security gardens. Three schools: Belmont Secondary; Colwood Elementary; and Westshore Centre will be the ones involved in the growing and cultivating the garden. This should increase the networking and social capital between the schools and decrease and rivalry between them.
Schools, from what I remember, are always in competition with each other. I grew up in a tri- city type area and if my school had decided to start a garden, the other two schools would either have sabotaged our garden or built a bigger, better garden. There would be no collaboration liek there is between these three schools.
The focus is great: teaching young children about food security, something that should have been done a long time ago. The garden is calling for volunteers, yet this is the first I've heard of it. They should have engaged the community more fully by providing information to the people that live in it. The garden has mainly applied for outside grants to fund it, instead of asking the surrounding neighbourhoods for help.
If the Westshore Centre can do it, hopefully RRU will be next!!